Armed with an address and some ugly mug shot photos courtesy of Hoodie Brown, I headed out to the South Bronx in search of Sam Tagaletto. Ironically, he lived less than six blocks from Yankee Stadium. Was that how he’d first met Dwayne?
Tagaletto’s home was on the second floor of a decrepit corner brownstone, the bricks of which looked to be literally crumbling when not outright missing. This guy apparently didn’t care much about curb appeal.
Or, for that matter, who wandered into his building off the street.
Not only was there no buzzer system, the front door was actually propped open with – what else? – one of the bricks from the building’s façade.
My plan once inside was fairly simple. So simple, in fact, any eight-year-old could have done it and probably had. Ring and run!
After climbing the stairs, I rapped my knuckles hard against the door of apartment 2 – B before dashing up to the third floor. I needed a glimpse of Tagaletto to make sure it was really him – assuming he was home.
He was.
After the sharp snap! of a turning dead bolt, the door to his apartment opened as wide as its chain lock would let it. That’s when I saw him – tall, skinny, and with a narrow, mottled face not even a mother could love. Hell, this guy looked worse in real life than in his terrible mug shots.
I stole another peek down through the third-floor railing as Tagaletto glanced left and right with his dark, deep-set eyes. Then, like a turtle, he retreated back into his apartment.
I settled in for the wait.
Hopefully, the guy would soon have places to go and people to see, any one of which could be the break I was looking for. I needed to get lucky. Then again, with my luck the guy would turn out to be a hermit. Sam Tagaletto, the agoraphobic bookie of the South Bronx…
Great, just great.
Less than half an hour later, though, I heard it once again – the sound of a turning dead bolt.
Yes! Sam Tagaletto was leaving his apartment. Now, where was he going? And could I follow him without being spotted and getting the shit kicked out of me?
Chapter 59
I COULD COUNT on one hand how many times in my life I’d ever “tailed” someone. And I’d still have five fingers left over.
This was a new feeling, all right, including the relentless pounding of my heart as I fell in line behind Tagaletto out on the street. How close is too close?
Best not to find out, I decided. I kept a safe distance for the first few blocks, nearly losing him once when he turned a corner at a busy intersection. In fact, were it not for Tagaletto’s nicotine habit I would’ve lost him for sure along the crowded sidewalk. All I had to do was keep my eye on the gray cloud hovering over his head. The guy smoked more than a chimney in the wintertime.
Lean and scraggly, Tagaletto wasn’t exactly the physically imposing type. But somehow, some way, he still managed to look menacing. Maybe it was the “don’t fuck with me” walk. He definitely had that down pat.
For another few blocks I kept right in line behind him. Until, finally, he made another turn, disappearing from view in a maze of storefronts.
Immediately I began to sprint. Tagaletto had gone down a narrow alley next to a pizza parlor, its red neon sign glowing in the window: SLICE OF HEAVEN.
“Shit, where is he?” I mumbled, reaching the alley and peering around the corner. Out of breath, all I could see were piles of garbage lining both sides and no one in between. Slowly, I started to walk. Where the hell did he go?
I saw the most probable answer halfway down. It was a metallic door, the only one. If I had to bet, it led into the kitchen of Slice of Heaven, but that’s as close as I wanted to get. My nose was telling me this was a bad place to be, and it had nothing to do with the smell of pepperoni and onions in the air.
I was about to turn around and get the hell out of there, when I heard the door in the alley begin to open, the sound of rusted hinges ricocheting off the walls. I quickly moved behind a Dumpster that reeked so badly I put my sleeve over my nose.
There were maybe two inches of daylight between the piled garbage and the wall, just enough to catch a glimpse of Tagaletto stepping back outside.
He was lighting a cigarette. And he wasn’t alone.
Holy shit.
I recognized the other guy right away. How could I not? He was Carmine Zambratta, a.k.a. the Zamboni.
There was never a more fitting nickname for a mob guy. Zambratta not only looked like a Zamboni – the machine that smooths the ice at hockey rinks – he acted like one. From what I knew, he was a fixer, the kind of guy used when there was a “rough patch” that needed smoothing over. All of New York knew his face. Countless times his mug had graced the covers of the city’s tabloids – and each time the headline was a variation on the same theme. Not guilty!
Zambratta’s ability to escape conviction was rivaled by only one other mob figure. That would be Eddie “The Prince” Pinero.
So why was I so surprised to see Zambratta?
Possibly because he didn’t report to Eddie Pinero. Just the opposite. The Zamboni worked for a rival boss by the name of Joseph D’zorio.
It took me a few seconds to do anything besides stare at the two mob guys. Then I reached for my pocket. Looking down, I searched for the camera application on my iPhone. Raising the phone, I eyed the screen to center Tagaletto and Zambratta in the picture I was about to take.
Shit. Now what had happened?
Zambratta was gone. Where the hell had he disappeared to?
“I’m right here, cocksucker,” I suddenly heard as the nose of a gun hit my cheek.
Chapter 60
“DO I KNOW YOU?” Zambratta asked, his tone already anticipating my expected answer.
“No,” I said, trying not to shake. God only knows what my tone sounded like. Scared shitless, probably. Out of my league, out of my element, out of my mind?
“You’re right, I don’t know you,” he said. “So how do you know me?”
“I don’t.”
Zambratta cocked his gun, the click! echoing in my ear. “Don’t bullshit me,” he said. “Everybody knows me. I’m a legend.”
I tried to breathe normally but it was becoming next to impossible. “I know who you are,” I corrected myself. “What I meant was, I didn’t know you’d be here.” What the hell was that supposed to mean?
I turned slightly, my eyes meeting his for a split second.
He was very intense and focused, and I saw enough to know that he was trying to decide what to do with me.
“Sam!” he called out.
Tagaletto walked over to the Dumpster, his latest cigarette dangling from his thin lips. “What a stink,” he said. Then he shrugged. “Who is he?”
“You tell me,” said Zambratta. “You’re the one brought him here.”
“I’ve never seen him before. No idea who this idiot is.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“What’s your name?” Zambratta asked me.
My first thought was to make one up. Thankfully, my second, somewhat more rational thought prevailed. “Nick Daniels,” I answered.
“Turn and face the wall, Nick,” said Zambratta, backing up a few steps. I’d barely heard the words before Tagaletto stepped in and gave me some help – courtesy of a hard shove. As soon as my palms slammed against the bricks, he frisked me.
Out came my wallet.
“Hey,” I said instinctively, but then I shut myself up.
“Turn back around,” ordered Zambratta. “But keep your hands nice and high.”
When I did, I saw Tagaletto checking my driver’s license. He gave Zambratta a nod. I was telling the truth. Did that count for something with mob guys? Probably not.
“So who the hell are you, Nick Daniels?”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Ahhh. So were you following Sam?”
So much for the truth. It was time to lie. C’mon, Nick, think fast!
Faster!<
br />
“I’m doing a story,” I answered. “It’s about bookies. Actually, it’s about New Yorkers who are ruined by their gambling habits.” That was pretty good, under the circumstances.
“You expect me to believe that total crock of shit?”
I nodded at Tagaletto. “He’s a bookie, isn’t he?”
“So what does that make me?” asked Zambratta. “Am I going to be in your story now, too?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure this was a bad idea for a story. A really bad idea, I now realize. So I’m out of here. All right if I slowly lower my hands?”
Zambratta chuckled. I’d become his court jester and that was fine by me. Just so long as I wasn’t his next victim.
“What should we do with him, Sam?” asked Zambratta. “Any brilliant ideas?”
Tagaletto shrugged again, flicking the butt of his cigarette against the wall. “The guy obviously knows some things he shouldn’t,” he said.
“You’re saying we should kill him?”
“It’s your call. But I would.”
Zambratta nodded. “So go ahead,” he said, tossing Tagaletto his gun. “Kill him.”
Chapter 61
I SWEAR THE gun traveled in slow motion from Zambratta to Tagaletto. That’s how it felt, at least. A stub-nose piece of metal floating through the air, and my life hanging in the balance.
I watched as the bookie fumbled, then nearly dropped the gun. He did drop his cigarette. His hands were clearly as surprised as the rest of him. Are you serious? said the look on his face.
Zambratta seemed pretty damn serious to me.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t do this!” I’m in love with a terrific woman, and I need to work it out before I die.
“Shut up!” barked Zambratta.
I stared back at Tagaletto with a whole lot of irony cruising around in my brain. He was holding a gun, but there was no longer anything menacing about him. The truth was, he looked nervous, almost as scared as I was, and he wasn’t the one with the death sentence here.
He can’t do it! He doesn’t have it in him!
“What’s the matter, Sam? What are you waiting for?” asked Zambratta. “Kill him.”
Tagaletto didn’t say a word. He couldn’t even look at Zambratta. Or me. His head was down, his eyes trained on the filthy ground of the alley.
“There’s no need to do this,” I tried again. “I’m no threat to either of you. You let me leave and it’s like this never happened.”
“I said, SHUT UP!” barked Zambratta again, the veins in his tree stump of a neck bulging above the collar of his brown leather jacket.
Then he turned back to Tagaletto. “We don’t have all day here, Sam. If you don’t have the stones for this, let me know.”
Christ! Zambratta was goading him to commit murder – my murder!
I watched in horror as Tagaletto started to look up from the ground. His eyes stared directly into mine. Next he raised his arm, the gun aimed straight for my chest.
Do something, Nick! Lunge for him! Anything!
I saw that Tagaletto’s hand was beginning to tremble. He steadied it with his other hand. He was steeling his nerve. This was his first time, wasn’t it?
“Don’t do this,” I told him.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The air exploded around me, the blistering sound of the shot piercing my ears.
But no pain right away.
I looked down at myself. There was no blood visible. No wound that I could see.
Did Tagaletto just miss me from six feet away?
That’s when I finally looked at Tagaletto. Except he was no longer standing there. He was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.
“Lucky for you I always carry a spare,” said Zambratta. He returned the second pistol to a holster inside his jacket.
I couldn’t move and I felt paralyzed. The question I wanted to ask was, why was Tagaletto dead and not me? But I couldn’t speak.
Zambratta answered anyway. “Sam was a careless mother-fucker, always has been,” he sneered. “Today, it’s a reporter like you. Tomorrow, it’s a Fed.”
He slid my driver’s license into his pocket and tossed my wallet to the ground. Then he really fucked with me.
“I’m not supposed to kill you yet,” he said.
Chapter 62
ALL THE WAY back to my apartment, Zambratta’s last line echoed in my head like the sound of the gunshot that had killed Sam Tagaletto. What’s more, he knew who I was even before he saw my driver’s license.
Because he worked for Joseph D’zorio.
Everything was coming together in a way I could never have imagined. And that wasn’t a good thing. People whom I didn’t know, whom I’d never even met before, knew exactly who I was and wanted me dead. Just not quite yet.
It was all the more reason for me to run – don’t walk! – straight to the police. But I didn’t. I decided not to.
Just not quite yet. I was too consumed with the chase for the truth by this point. The same kid who had stared up in awe at the screen at Woodward and Bernstein in All the President’s Men was now too preoccupied with piecing together what had really brought me and Dwayne Robinson together that bloody day at Lombardo’s. Or, rather, who had brought us together.
If I had it right so far, it had all begun when Dwayne Robinson made some bad bets and lost money he didn’t have. He owed Sam Tagaletto, but Tagaletto was just a middleman. The person Dwayne really owed was Joseph D’zorio. After Dwayne bounced two checks, D’zorio could’ve broken his arms or sunk him to the bottom of the Hudson River.
But D’zorio didn’t become a mob boss by using muscle alone. He was smart and he was cunning. Played chess, not checkers. So he came up with a better way for Dwayne to pay off his debt. All the former ace southpaw had to do was break his long-standing silence with the media and consent to an interview in a seemingly random steakhouse with a credible journalist who would eat up the potential story.
Let the tape recorder roll.
“I have a message from Eddie.”
Just like that, D’zorio had set up Eddie Pinero. He had used Dwayne and me. But most of all, he had used the fact that Pinero would have a motive to want his longtime attorney dead.
It was a pretty damn perfect plan. Right down to my coming across the Pinero reference on my recorder. Of course I would have done that. In fact, had I not left my jacket at Lombardo’s and talked to the hostess, Tiffany, I never would’ve become the least bit suspicious.
That’s when D’zorio’s plan became a little too perfect. At least for me.
The question now was whether I could prove my theory to anyone, or at least anyone who mattered in police circles. And whether I would live long enough to do it.
The second I walked into my apartment I grabbed Derrick Phalen’s business card. It was only a little past two o’clock. Odds were he was in his office. Still, he had asked that I call him only on his cell.
Phalen picked up quick, only one ring, but then said he’d have to call me back in a couple of minutes. When he did call back, I could hear street sounds in the background. He’d obviously gone outside to speak to me. Was he being extremely paranoid or just smart as hell?
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” I told him. “This is going to blow your mind.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he came back. “What I found out last night will blow your mind.”
Chapter 63
PHALEN SAID HE couldn’t get into his news right now and he didn’t want to discuss it over the phone. “Nick, can you come by my apartment tonight?” he asked.
Are you kidding me? Yeah, like anything could stop me.
I called Courtney on the way over to Derrick’s that night. She was quiet and reserved, so I didn’t bring up Thomas Ferramore, and I also didn’t get into what had happened in the Bronx today. I did tell her I was seeing Phalen, and she told me, “Be careful, Nick. I don’t want to lose you.”
At a few minutes past eight, I exited the Henry Hudson Parkway in the heart of the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Phalen’s street was a few blocks east and was lined with prewar brownstones. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Save for one difference: available parking. I found a spot probably less than fifty feet from Phalen’s address.
As I grabbed my shoulder bag and hit the sidewalk, I was reminded of a joke my uncle Leo had once told me. I had been nine or ten years old.
“How do you keep a turkey in suspense?” he asked.
“I don’t know. How?”
Uncle Leo smiled. “I’ll tell you later. Turkey.”
I could barely wait to hear what Phalen had for me. I was actually speed-walking toward his brownstone and my heart was going pretty good. With one foot on the front stoop, however, I stopped.
Did I lock my car?
I couldn’t remember.
I reached into my pocket, my thumb searching for the lock button on my electronic key fob. I gave it a click and watched for the taillights on my Saab to blink – only they didn’t.
I clicked again.
No luck.
I cursed under my breath and started walking back, thinking I was out of range. The entire key chain was out of my pocket and aimed squarely at the dash. I was definitely close enough now.
But the taillights still weren’t blinking.
C’mon, already!
I shook the key fob, pressing the lock button hard a few more times. Was the little battery inside the thing dead?
No, it wasn’t. But I sure as hell was supposed to be.
BOOM! went my Saab.
Chapter 64
MY CAR ROSE in the air a good three feet as an orange fire-ball raced toward me, then knocked me down, my body slamming so hard against the sidewalk that I actually blacked out for a few seconds.
When I came to, the sound of the explosion was still pummeling my ears. All at once I could hear the shattering of glass, the twisting of metal, my car being blown to smithereens!
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